"Am I?" he smiled.
People less interested in him than Jean were grateful to Geoffrey Stonor when he smiled. They felt relieved from some intangible responsibility for the order of the universe.
The girl brightened wonderfully. "Oh, yes, very alarming indeed," she a.s.sured him cheerfully.
"How do you make that out?"
"I don"t need to "make it out." It"s so very plain." Then a little hastily, as if afraid of having said something that sounded like impious fault-finding, "Anybody"s alarming who is so--so much talked about, and so--well, like you, you understand."
"I don"t understand," he objected mendaciously--"not a little bit."
"I think you must," she said, with her candid air. "Though I had made up my mind that I wouldn"t be afraid of you any more since our week-end at Ulland."
"Ah, that"s better!"
There was nothing in the words, but in the gentleness with which he brought them out, so much that the girl turned her eyes away and played with the handle of her parasol.
"Have you been reading any more poetry?" he said.
"No."
"No? Why not?"
She shook her head. "It doesn"t sound the same."
"What! I spoilt it for you?"
She laughed, and again she shook her head, but with something shy, half-frightened in her look. Nervously she dashed at a diversion.
"I"m afraid I was a little misleading about the children. They aren"t in the garden yet. Shall we go up and see them having tea?"
"Oh, no, it would be bad for their little digestions to hurry them."
He sat down. Her face gave him as much credit as though he had done some fine self-abnegating deed.
They spoke of that Sunday walk in the valley below the Ulland links, and the crossing of a swollen little stream on a rotting and rickety log.
"I _had_ to go," she explained apologetically. "Hermione had gone on and forgotten the puppy hadn"t learnt to follow. I was afraid he"d lose himself."
"It _was_ a dangerous place to go across," he said, as if to justify some past opinion.
Her eyes were a little mischievous. "I never thought _you"d_ come."
"Why?" he demanded.
"Oh, because I thought you"d be too----" His slow look quickened as if to surprise in her some reflection upon his too solid flesh--or might it even be upon the weight of years? But the uncritical admiration in her face must have rea.s.sured him before the words, "I thought you"d be too grand. It was delightful to find you weren"t."
He kept his eyes on her. "Are you always so happy?"
"Oh, I hope not. That would be rather too inhuman, wouldn"t it?"
"Too celestial, perhaps!" He laughed--but he was looking into the blue of her eyes as if through them he too had caught a glimpse of Paradise.
"I remember thinking at Ulland," he said more slowly again, "I had never seen any one quite so happy."
"I was happy at Ulland. But I"m not happy now."
"Then your looks belie you."
"No, I am very sad. I have to go away from this delightful London to Scotland. I shall be away for weeks. It"s too dismal."
"Why do you go?"
"My grandfather makes me. He hates London. And his dreary old house on a horrible windy hill--he simply loves that!"
"And you don"t love it _at all_. I see." He seemed to be thinking out something.
Compunction visited the face before him. "I didn"t mean to say I didn"t love it _at all_. It"s like those people you care to be with for a little while, but if you must go being with them for ever you come to hate them--almost."
They sat silent for a moment, then with slow reflectiveness, like one who thinks aloud, he said--
"I have to go to Scotland next week."
"Do you! What part?"
"I go to Inverness-shire."
"Why, that"s where we are! Near----"
"Why shouldn"t I drop down upon you some day?"
"Oh, _will_ you? That would be----" She seemed to save herself from some gulf of betrayal. "There are walks about my grandfather"s more beautiful than anything you ever saw--or perhaps I ought to say more beautiful than anything _I_ ever saw."
"Nicer walks than at Ulland?"
"Oh, no comparison! One is a bridle-path all along a wonderful brown trout stream that goes racing down our hill. There"s a moor on one side, and a wood on the other, and a peat bog at the bottom."
"We might perhaps stop short of the bog."
"Yes, we"d stop at old McTaggart"s. He"s the head-keeper and a real friend. McTaggart "has the Gaelic." But he hasn"t much else, so perhaps you"d prefer his wife."
"Why should I prefer his wife?"
Jean"s face was full of laughter. Stonor"s plan of going to Scotland had singularly altered the character of that country. Its very inhabitants were now perceived to be enlivening even to talk about; to _know_--the gamekeeper"s wife alone--would repay the journey thither.
"I a.s.sure you Mrs. McTaggart is a travelled, experienced person."
He shook his head while he humoured her. "I"m not sure travel or experience is what we chiefly prize--in ladies."
"Oh, isn"t it? I didn"t know, you see. I didn"t know how dreadfully you might miss the terribly clever people you"re accustomed to in London."